Posts Tagged ‘Dan Lavoie’

Finally I have found time to finalize the Gallardo after Dan Lavoie’s wonderful tutorial. It is a larger build than the Audi, but also more rewarding. Not without issues, though. I did most of the body part, approximately one third of the whole tutorial, before coming to a dead end where none of the prescribed commands worked. Something was not right in my otherwise beautiful looking part. Eventually I started from scratch again, and this time completed the tutorial without issues. The only thing missing was instructions for modelling the Lamborghini logo on the rear of the car that you see on this SolidSmack page. I must do that on my own, but after having been tutored by Dan it must be a breeze.

The model is also a good test of your PC hardware. At around step 230, with the introduction of meshes, the model started to become seriously demanding to handle for my Q9400@3.2GHz . I first added 2 GB extra RAM (Windows 7, 64 bit), which had absolutely no effect. I then reduced the “Image Quality” sliders found in “Options -> Document Properties” to mid position, and this made the model much more responsive, but it does take no less than two and a half minutes to open from scratch.

If you don’t know how to model soft shapes with splines in SolidWorks, I can wholeheartedly recommend a video tutorial by Dan Lavoie where he shows you just how to model an Audi R8 step-by-step. This is pure “learning by doing” and it works very well. I did this model as a novice in SolidWorks (but having 3D experience from Cinema4D and Alibre Express):